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EDITORIAL NOTESSource: The Advocate of Peace (1894-1920), Vol. 79, No. 7 (JULY, 1917), pp. 201-204Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20667828 .

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1917 ADVOCATE OF PEACE 201

cent and helpless. He must sweep fine, upstanding,

hopeful manhood from the earth. His own sufferings are not all. He must bring misery and darkness and

death upon his fellow-men for the sake of the living

principles which we as a nation profess.

Perhaps it is worth the price. Certain it seems now

that, as the President has said, "we can do no other." But we shall win more swiftly to that peace, and the

liberty for which we slay and lay waste the sweet things of life, if we do not gloss over the price we are paying, if

back of the fine names we give it we keep always in mind what blood and treasure really mean.

EDITOPAL NOTES A Comparison Our so-called "Liberty Loan," the of Figures. first one probably of a long series, was

largely over-subscribed. In the last

hours of June 15, with the opportunity of obtaining the

bonds about to be closed, the Treasury officials were

swamped with applications; the American people had

responded to the Government's call fully and over

whelmingly. Within fifteen days the inconceivable and

unprecedented sum of nearly three billion of dollars had been offered to the Government, and the next day busi ness continued as usual.

But America's contribution on the altar of war, big as it seems, was really an insignificant matter. Revised

figures show that, exclusive of the American loan, the nations at war have raised and virtually expended a

total of $66,521,400,000. The amounts are:

Great Britain ...................... $21,021,400,000 France ............................ 12,140,000,000 Russia ............................. 8,535,000,000

Italy ............................ 2,845,000,000

Belgium ............. ............. 100,000,000

Japan ............................ 26,000,000

Serbia ............................ 18,000,000

Germany .......................... 14226,000,000

Austria-Hungary ................... 7,610,000,000

Total ..................... $66,521,400,000

It ought not to require any profound economic in

sight to convince us that these figures are alarming. They-mean that the nations are robbing the cradles and

multiplying the graves for many generations. This

pyramiding of credits, substitution of paper bonds for real money, must work an infinite injury to savings banks, insurance organizations, charity work and educa tion. Before this war began the nations of Europe were

borrowing to pay the interest upon the war debt of a

century before. It would seem that the present debts of the nations are beyond their power ever to pay. The United States may be able to stand for a time between the bondholders of Europe and repudiation We will do so. but for how long no man can tell.

Congress has authorized five more billions in bonds, some of which will be offered in a few months. They will be subscribed. The taxes will come along shortly. They will be paid. We are all soon to feel the pinch. We shall bear it. The United States is with the other

nations, a participant at last, in the war. Its match less resources will help convince the Central powers of the hopelessness of their task. Our bit should there fore go far toward bringing the German Government to terms and ending the war. That this economic unity of the allied nations presages a new political unity is

probable, but prophecy these days is difficult.

Church Work Religion, pure and undefiled, is hav in War Time.

ing rather hard sledding these days. Peace-making is no sinecure.

The World Alliance for Promoting International

Friendship Through the Churches, an international

body which cooperates in the United States with the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, and also with Protestant denominations not included in

the Federal Council, holds its head up, however, war

notwithstanding. It fearlessly challenges support in its effort to "Christianize international relations." It in

vites every church to establish an International Friend

ship Committee and every Christian to become a mem

ber. Recovering from the shock of our country at war, it comes to its task again, bravely pleading for adequate agencies for the settlement of international difficulties

by means other than by war, for laws for the adequate

protection of aliens, for right and friendly policies in our dealing with Orientals, for comprehensive immigra tion legislation free from race discrimination, for right relations with Mexico and Latin America, and adequate national relief and reconstruction funds for grappling with the frightful sufferings of Europe. Its slogan is, International Justice and Good Will. It frees itself

from questions of church organization and doctrine, and, loyal to our government, it seeks to decide no issue

relative to the present war.

The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in

America is planning a handbook, soon to appear, enti tled "The Church in Time of War." The book will

contain the messages to the Council at Washington,

May 8-9. It will aim also to set forth a guide for prac tical work for conserving economic, social, moral, and

religious forces of the nation. That relig'ious workers

may be informed, the book will tell of the work of the

army and navy chaplains, the Young Men's Christian

Associations, of the social evils peculiar to war, of food

production and distribution, of the preservation of de

mocracy and national vitality, and discuss topics like the love of enemies, the freedom of conscience. and the

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202 ADVOCATE OF PEACE July

end of militarism. To the charge that the church has in this the greatest epoch of human history no. worthy voice, the facts herein enumerated are at least in part an answer. Idealism in America is not dead, but liveth. The religious world of America is beginning to sense

the meaning of the ancient seer: "Say ye not, A con

spiracy, concerning all whereof this people shall say, A conspiracy; neither fear ye their fear, nor be in dread thereof. Jehovah of hosts, him shall ye sanctify; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread."

Still More But there are religious enterprises Religion. about us no less valuable than these

fine efforts of the church. The "hand with leaves from the Tree of Life" is not withheld from the wounds received in battle. The "heart

breaking cry in the night" is heard. The Emergency Committee for the assistance of Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians in distress, convened by the Re

ligious Society of Friends to aid innocent alien ene

mies in Great Britain rendered destitute by the war, is but one of a vast number of heartening facts. Men and women are already urging that no line of distinction be drawn between native-born citizens and those of foreign birth or parentage in America. A conference was held in Washington on Flag Day, June 14, for the purpose of

promoting a policy of fair treatment for all foreign-born citizens in our land. But, furthermore, and far from

least, our War Departinent is going vigorously after

saloons, brothels, bawdy-houses, and houses of ill-fame in the zones surrounding the training camps of our

army. The War Department is determined to protect our boys in the mobilization camps, officers' training camps, army and naval camps. From a long letter from the Secretary of War we glean this: "I am deter

mined that our new training camps, as well as the sur

rounding zones within an effective radius, shall not be

places of temptation and peril." Thus the work of religion persists. The moral law will

yet supersede the jungle law that "might makes right." As the veteran naturalist, John Burroughs, recently told the members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters: "Germany may become the dominant power in

Europe, but that end will never be achieved by the force of arms, but by superior efficiency in the arts of peace. The new law of nature holds, that the nation which is most just and most humane shall prevail. The rule of

might prevails throughout the world of matter and the life below man, and long prevailed in pre-human and human history. But the old law of nature has been limited and qualified by a new law which has come into the world and which is just as truly a biological law in its application toniman as was the old law of might I

refer to the law of man's moral nature, the sense of

right, justice, mercy."

What of the George Sylvester Viereck utters in

German The American Weekly (erstwhile The Americans?

Fatherland) an urgent appeal for the

passing of the resolution recently introduced in the House by Congressman Britten, offering to Americans of German descent or birth and of conscription age the

option of agricultural service. The appeal is timely and poignant. Our Civil War

saw brother against brother, and even father against son, each fighting willingly and incurring the horror of fratricide and worse for the convictions they held dear. The present war has presented numerous instances of the same thing-brothers dwelling within mutually hos tile boundaries being compelled to take up arms against each other. Poland is a nation of such fratricides.

It would undoubtedly be to the shame of this nation should the Government compel its citizens of German extraction to make actual war upon their blood rela tives. It is unreasonable to believe that any exemption court would refuse to transfer to other fields of emer

gency work a German who himself besought exemption and gave proof that he had blood relatives in the German Army. We think that Mr. Viereck may safely leave this to the American sense of justice, which,' it may be, he imperfectly understands. At the same time, 'there are doubtless plenty of Americans of enemy extraction who firmly believe in the justice of our share in this war, and will under no circumstances plead for exemp tion. In such cases there seems to be no need for a spe cial act of exemption, nor any excuse for it.

Such talk leads inevitably to the reflection that it is difficult to define the state of brotherhood, and still more so to make just laws relative to it. In one sense this whole ghastly performance is fratricide. On the other hand, blood brothers-brothers in the most limited sense of the word-have been known to cherish implaca ble hatred for each other. The matter of the Britten resolution would seem to us to be a private one, between each man of enemy affiliation and his own conscience. Certainly, here, as in other cases of conscientious scru ples, the earnest and truthful objector to military serv ice should be respected and given tasks in other lines of service. Such, as we understand it, is the intention of the Government at present.

The Fresh Air It does not seem necessary to make and Sunshine any elaborate comment on the follow of Slaughter.

ing paragraph clipped from the Army and Navy Journal. We have read it over svera tim.

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1917 ADVOCATE OF PEACE 203

and are as yet uncertain whether tears or laughter better

express our sentiments:

"Youth has always been regarded as a time of impet uosity, of rash enterprises, of the age among man's seven when he most liked to look upon 'the bright face of danger.' Our youthful contemporary, The New

Republic, does not seem to be cast in this mold, how ever, which is revealed in its attitude toward the 'con scientious objector.' It seems to think that there is a

quality we must allow for and tolerate, if not admire, in this type of man, and also of the numerous class that jloes not like to think of killing its fellow-men. We suppose that in the fullness of time, when the selective draft is in operation, and some of these very young and

apparently bloodless men spend a few months receiving military instruction, they will learn that 'killing men' in the repulsive viewpoint they hold is the last thing

military men think of. What they stand in need of is to be taken away from study of their souls and of 'cases' in the slums of the big cities and to get out into the fresh air and the sunshine where the voice of the drill sergeant will make them forget socialism and those nebulous mysteries which may be grouped under the head of higher criticism."

The temptation to parody this effusion is, of course,

strong. The reader, as he peruses the above, will find his thoughts running naturally in somewhat of the fol

lowing vein:

"Age may not unfairly be regarded as that period -in man's life when experience has ripened into the fruit of charity, tolerance, and understanding, and when the bright face of wisdom smiles upon him. An excep tional case, however, is that of the Army and Navy Journal, of respectable antiquity among magazines, and the exception is particularly to be noted in its position upon the, issue of the conscientious objector. For this citizen it has little charity, less understanding, and no tolerance. As Nature abhors a vacuum, so does this paper abhor the man so dull that he cannot kill his fellow-man without letting his mind and conscience rest unduly upon the act of killing. The true soldier, the Journal would have us understand, keeps his ideals high, and if he must needs crush and maim, tear and rend human flesh, extinguish guiltless life and bring unparalleled suffering into the world, he can at least so arrange his mental and spiritual equipment that in the

midst of these horrid acts they themselves are the last things he thinks of. Let the conscientious poltroon forsake his dallying in the byways of poverty and human

misery, let him put from his mind his puerile distress because of suffering and sorrow, let him but turn from these childish things and emerge into the gaiety and joyousness of the soldier's life, the school of the bayonet, the practice-ground of tearing fellow-men to tatters, the great, red-blooded university for human extinction, de vastation, and obliteration, and there he will learn in time to forget his conscience, to be steeled against broth erly love, to laugh at the petty woes of 'the least of these,' and to fling from himself forever the reproach of susceptibility to those nebulous mysteries of Christ and Christliness which may be grouped under the head of higher criticism."~

School as Because of our nervous anxiety the Usual.

feeling spread immediately after our

entrance- into the war that our boys and girls of secondary and higher educational institu tions should leave school and "do their bit" toward the

prosecution of the war. Some felt that the National Educational Association of the United States should

postpone its meeting called for July 7-14, at Portland,

Oregon. The officers of that worthy organization have

concluded, however, that one of the things most needed in this country at the present time is the maintenance of as nearly normal educational conditions as possible during the period when we are changing from a peace basis to a war basis. It has taken the ground that there never has been a time when the opportunity for serious constructive thinking with regard to educational prob lems was more needed than now. The educators are

quite right in their assumption that loyalty to our

country demands that we study the problems with which we are confronted; that if the war is of short duration the services of the children in our public schools will not be needed, and that if the war shall be of long dura tion the services of the children should be directed in channels the value of which shall be determined only after careful investigation and consideration. The Port land meeting is to be held, therefore. The key words of the meeting will be "preparedness, patriotism, and nationalism." The school men are planning to come

together at Portland with the same spirit that the ex

perts in business affairs are coming together in support of the Government.

Dr. P. P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of

Education, is aiding the school men in their efforts to enable the boys and girls best to* "do their bit" by re

maining at school. President Wilson has found it wise to counsel the children to remain at their tasks. And this is as it shoild be. Our boys and girls constitute the Nation's last line of defense, and if this is to be a

long war they will eventually be our first line of defense when that time arrives. They should be fit for the job. September should find our educational institutions pre pared to carry on school as usual.

The Martyrs' The first call for martyrs has been Mobilization, issued by the Woman's Peace Party; of

70 Fifth avenue, New York City. According to press reports, the party voted to advise its followers to write upon their registration blanks, on June 5, a protest against compulsory service and a dee laration that they would go to jail rather than subinit to conscription. While we believe that each man's con science should be his judge of whether he will or not engage in slaughter for his country's sake, yet it eems

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204 ADVOCATE OF PEACE July

to us this behest of this Woman's Peace Party savors of

"looking for trouble." It would seem to us also that

should a man's convictions on this subject be so strong that he would suffer persecution rather than waver in

his attitude, that same man would feel no need of shout

ing about this beforehand. A third reflection is, that it will be most embarrassing to these self-appointed mar

tyrs, should the Government, as seems not unlikely, re

spect their conscientious objections and evince no slight est desire to put the gentlemen in prison.

DISAIMAMENT AND PEACE* By HON. JAMES L. SLAYDEN, President, American Peace Society

F OU. five, or possibly six years ago I read a great speech by the member of the House of Commons

for the division of Carnarvon, Wales. It was an elo

quent plea for arbitration and the settlement of interna tional disputes by the method of courts, and a specially strong and convincing argument for an agreed reduc tion of national armaments. That great democrat and advocate of peace is now the Premier of the British Em

pire. His wonderful speech in London of April 12 shows that he holds the same views still.

I am not one of that class of pacifists which believes it possible entirely to prevent war, at least not just yet, and refuses to discuss it except from the point of view of its absolute and immediate ending. But I do believe that it is possible, by arrangements between governments that now thoroughly appreciate the cost of wars and are

beginning to understand their stupidity and futility, to make them comparatively harmless.

Out in the Southwest I once knew a man who called himself a snake merchant. His chief article of trade was that dangerous and repulsive reptile, the rattlesnake. He would handle his merchandise in a way that made the onlooker shiver; but he knew what they did not that he had made the snakes harmless by pulling their

fangs. Now, that is precisely what I would like to do to

aggressive and belligerent governments that covet the lands and sovereignties of other nations. I would pull their fangs by taking away from them nearly all the military forces that foolish and confiding people have put at the command of kings. Ambitious monarchs can be made comparatively harmless by reducing the size of armies so much that they will cease to be anything more than a police force. Then they will serve a useful pur pose at home and cease to be a menace abroad.

One soldier to each 1,000 people in any country is

enough to keep internal peace in a just government, and if governments are not just the sooner they are over turned the better. But if one soldier to each 1,000 is not enough, two surely will be, and international agree ment should prevent any government from going beyond that.

Suppose the federated German Empire had only con trolled an army of 75,000 men in 1914, or, taking the

larger figure I have suggested, 150,000; would there have been an invasion of Belgium, whose chief offense was that she lay in the highway between Berlin and Paris? Would Liege, Louvain, Dinant, Ypres, and Rheims now be in ruins and their priceless treasures of

books, pictures, and architecture forever lost to the world? Armies of the size I suggest could not have done all that mischief, yet they would be large enough to keep the criminal classes under control, while utterly unable to thwart democracy's right to break the shackles of oppression, which is always imposed from above by the aid of the autocrat's military arm.

Can we ever get the consent of governments to a gen eral disarmament? I believe so; and I furthermore believe that never in the history of the world has there been such an opportunity for this greatest of all reforms as we will see at the close of the war in Europe.

The cost of modern war will plead for it and will finally compel it. Great Britain is now spending $10, 000,000 more each day in the prosecution of war than the Army of the United States cost in any one of the 24 years from 1875 down to and including 1899.

The belligerent powers of Europe are spending more

money each day than the average annual cost of the whole Government of the United States between 1800 and 1861.

In 1865 the-total cost of our Government, outside the Post Office Department, was $1,295,099,290, and the cost per capita in that most expensive year of the Civil War was $37.27.

Last year, when we were at peace with everybody but Pancho Villa, and, perhaps, on occasions, with Carranza, our taxes per capita were nearly $15.

Contrast that with the $4.43 per head paid during Cleveland's administration for all expenses outside the Post Office Department, and contrast it with the $85 per head you will have to pay for the next year, and charge the increased cost to war and excessive preparation for

war.

We in America may stand such burdens a few years more, but Europe cannot. All these vast sums, both iP Europe and America, must come out of the sweat and toil of the man who works. But even that long-suffer ing class is beginning to think and assert its rights.

Already there is talk of repudiation in Europe, but not, of course, by officials of the contending powers, for

they are still trying to borrow, but by students of the world-wide madness, who realize that there is a limit to the burdens that men can bear. That outcome would 1M hard on those who have put their earnings into the notes of Russia, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and

the United Kingdom, but in the long run it might not be bad for the mass of men. If excessive armaments and war credits should both be abolished it will lead to a long period of peace.

The theory that huge military preparationi asnres

*Selected by the Editor from an address by Mr. Slayden at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Philadelphia, April 20, 1917,

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